What we want from Fallout 4 - @ PC Gamer

January 29th, 2013, 10:12

Two other points that the article fails to include concerning survival:

- It is now typical from so called RPGers to expect the following pattern: struggle at start until you grow into the most potent creature in the gameworld. It does not fit the survival theme. Players wont accept to struggle all the game and/or organize themselves to reduce the survival burden.

-scripted story: players want it all about the scripted story. It comes with one major demand: plot advancement. The plot must be advanced. Sooner or later, the survival based gameplay will put itself in the way of the plot advancement. The game will be reported as sucking because players are not free to advance the plot to their wishes.

For an AAA studio, working on such developpments is going to be really hard. KS projects might be a solution but the issue is that they will be operated with much less means.

Here's the situation: AAA studios had the means but their customers wanted them to focus on secondary features in the genre.
KS starters might want to explore the direction but will lack the resources to deliver on their ambitions.

Originally Posted by CountChocula
I don't quite understand. Personally, I enjoy these kinds of mechanics and I use some hunger, thirst and hypothermia survival mods for Skyrim, but as far as I know, this was never intended by the developers to be part of the vanilla game.

As far as the game tells, a bottom to top economic gameworld was very intended by the developpers to be part of the vanilla game.

Skyrim's developpers shot for very much higher than the current vanilla version.
Many, many things were abandoned during developpment (even though the lead designer tried to force a few into release through that crazy idea of destroying a wood mill to provoke what the game could not provoke by itself)

Ultimately, the radiant quest tool was not supposed to place scripted quests only but placed quests as the gameworld generated them.

Skyrim is all the measure that game developpers do not manage to do right now.

Originally Posted by ChienAboyeur
As far as the game tells, a bottom to top economic gameworld was very intended by the developpers to be part of the vanilla game.

Skyrim's developpers shot for very much higher than the current vanilla version.
Many, many things were abandoned during developpment (even though the lead designer tried to force a few into release through that crazy idea of destroying a wood mill to provoke what the game could not provoke by itself)

They certainly tried a lot of different features in beta, but every interview I've read suggests they had no intention of implementing any kind of hunger and thirst. Todd and some of the other developers have been asked about this and they always say it's not the kind of experience they were striving for.

Fortunately, there are plenty of Skyrim mods available with survival features, and I'm hoping for Fallout 4 they will consider how important survival is to this type of post apocalyptic setting.

To be perfectly honest, what I want from Fallout 4 is simple: More of the same. Just learn a bit from F: NV regarding interesting quests and factions, and FO4 could turn out fantastic. I really like the current direction of the FO franchise.

Originally Posted by CountChocula
They certainly tried a lot of different features in beta, but every interview I've read suggests they had no intention of implementing any kind of hunger and thirst. Todd and some of the other developers have been asked about this and they always say it's not the kind of experience they were striving for.

Fortunately, there are plenty of Skyrim mods available with survival features, and I'm hoping for Fallout 4 they will consider how important survival is to this type of post apocalyptic setting.

That is what developpers tell and what the game tells.

People who believe the words of developpers think they play a game when dragons'procedural AI leads them to swoop in on preys on the ground and to take them on the skies or that you can destroy mills to destroy the local economy.

Otherwise, there's playing the game and seeing what got left out after each cycle of developpment.

Personnally, I made up my mind a long time ago. Somehow, I did not find that the developpers' words and their PR stunts could beat playing the game and seeing what was tried and left out.

I'd love it if it was more challenging and survival orientated. But the level builders at Beth just can't help themselves liberally littering everywhere with ammo, money and whatnot. Plus it would put off the casual gamer, and can't have that can we.

I can't really get excited about another Fallout anyway. I love the setting and I like both the old and the new games… But I kinda feel it has run it's course - the story this setting has to tell has been told. It's not like a fantasy setting like TES, where you can just put any kind of story in and it doesn't matter all that much. At least I feel that way.

Originally Posted by human_male
I'd love it if it was more challenging and survival orientated. But the level builders at Beth just can't help themselves liberally littering everywhere with ammo, money and whatnot. Plus it would put off the casual gamer, and can't have that can we.

At least we can be sure that this game will ship with excellent mod tools, paving the way for survival oriented gameplay mods. I can't imagine Bethesda ever turning their back on the modding community.

Originally Posted by human_male
I'd love it if it was more challenging and survival orientated. But the level builders at Beth just can't help themselves liberally littering everywhere with ammo, money and whatnot. Plus it would put off the casual gamer, and can't have that can we.

Cant be that simple. Survival when poorly done leads to a one pony trick show.

Players want combat. A lot of it. Scaling down loot only scales up the time required to gather the items.

How long before players start to complain that it is rather abnormal that killing 30 enemies only yields one revolver and 14 bullets?

Beside, developpers abused that route, using it to fake more content than the game had.

Survival, due to the character progression system, is what is expected at start of these kind of games.

The route to go is the route tried by Bethesda for Skyrim. But they failed big time on this one.

Better to keep an eye on games like Dead State or Forsaken Fortress to see what developpers can deliver in terms of survival gameplay.